A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Saturday, June 28, 2014

This is to prove some ideas I have about the fall of the Conservative Party in Scotland (and thus of the apparent fall in support for market freedom so long as there was no other credible free market party here).
At the start of this Scotland gave the Tories just over 50% of the vote, more than Labour has ever achieved. By comparison Wales was always dodgy ground for them and in fact if you bear in nmind that neither main party hopes to get above 40% of the UK vote now a Tory drop of 4% from 30% to 26% there proportionately counts as a gain - certainly so compared to Labour.

The first Tory drop here is from 50% to just under 40% over the 15 years between 1955 and 1970. That loss is serious. It covers the period of the Conservative councillors, who used to fight under the name Progressives (a title the left now claim so I assume they think it is attractive) largely dropped that name and became Conservative. This was the end of a particularly Scottish, anti-socialist, political institution which didn't suit the vision of Tory "modernisers" of the time and which incidentally suited the Unionist vote - basically the group of, mainly protestant Liberals who at the end of the 19thC or later, split from them over Irish home rule. They were willing to work with the Tories but were never really were comfortable being them. The protestant unionist vote was a group Tory "modernisers" were embarrassed to have supporting them. Even so, while losing 12% of the vote is a bad fall, remember that this was the period when the SNP first won Hamilton and became something more than a fringe and when the Liberals were rising from the edge of non-existence to 7.5% in 1970 so probably half of this drop can be put down to these factors.

The 36 years from late 1974 to 2010 shows a drop from 24% to 17%. Again bad but not a disaster, at least as counts the amount of change. There was a UK wide drop up to 2005 of 4% (though they recovered elsewhere in 2010 - Gordon Brown was not as unpopular here as elsewhere). There was a greater fall here during Thatcher's 2nd and 3rd elections but it was certainly not the "electoral poison" she is claimed to have been. I think some of that can be blamed on their opposition to devolution and some (though the better than UK recovery in 1992 suggests not much) to the coal industry being bigger here.

The real disaster in Scottish Conservative voting was from 1970 to late 1974. A 4 year period that saw them fall from 38% to 24%. 37% of their voters gone. Now that is the definition of electoral disaster.

So what was the cause of this. I am going to say it was Ted Heath's selling out of the fishing industry to join the EU. The EU's common fisheries policy, that the fish belonged to the whole EU not the countries in whose waters they were, was cynically cobbled together hours before negotiations with would be new members started. Heath and his supporters made it absolutely clear that they were willing to sell out our industry. It was, after all, an industry concentrated in far away Scotland, in small towns and villages where the metropolitan media never go. In his calculation of the political balance of power these people, their livelihoods and homes were expendable to achieve Heath's dream of membership of the EEC.

Since fishing was a largely a small business, with captains owning their ships, it was not unionised. These towns and villages, didn't have the support of massive union power (much more massive then than now) and their PR and machines and flying picket thugs. Their fate has barely stirred the surface of the UK political and media class. While media pundits still lament how Thatcher destroyed mining communities (she didn't, economics did) they are simply ignorant of how Heath, quite deliberately and with no economic justification at all, murdered (murder being deliberate planned killing) Scottish fishing communities. But it stirred Scotland into considering that not only were we being ignored by London (we always knew that and being ignored by Westminster is not so bad) but that we were actively expendable and betrayable.

It may be 40 years on and the party may, or may claim to be, offering us the chance to leave, but the Scottish Tories deserve every single lost vote.

But the SNP don't deserve any better. The Tories may have murdered the industry but the self styled "Scottish National Party" have kept on mutilating the body. Nobody, not even the LibDems, are more enthusiastic for us staying in the EU. Nobody, certainly not the present Tories, are as keen to pay our membership of the EU in Scotland's fish. Though it is certain the terms of membership of a their "independent" Scotland would involve far more than what the EU already have from Britain. The SNP know the people of Scotland would never support another such sell out - that is why this most unpatriotic of parties has said it would not allow us a vote on rejoining the EU.

Yet the fishing fields are still there. A fair proportion of the fish are too, despite EU overfishing and they should recover if there were a few years of only the current UK landings taking place. If there were the political will to do so.

What the people of Scotland, and particularly the coastal fishing regions, need is a genuinely patriotic Scottish party (Scottish and British patriotism being entirely compatible) putting forward a Scottish programme which would include quitting the EU and allowing the British fishing industry to be as good as ever. Or better.

Friday, June 27, 2014

CAGW Not A Scientific But A Political Issue

Mike Haseler has written on his blog of the reasons why the global warming fraud grew. I think this is interesting enough to put up a long answer but that it must be long enough to post here as well. His full post is here and well worth it. My answers in italics. His assessment of the factors causing growth of the CAGW fraud and opposition is:

Climatology was a new discipline, where results took decades to come in. It had had very few of its ideas tested and had not the experience of other subjects of finding cherished theories were eventually disproven. So this new subject not only did not have an established culture, but the culture that was developing did not have the caution that comes from having established theories overturned by the evidence. - Though new, and thus also lacking good long term records, it is worth noting that Hubert Lamb, who founded the CRU, before his retiral, never believed the warming scare.. Climatology was not doing badly till the politicians came along, poured money into it and appointed their own creatures. My opinion is that the reason "climate science", "social science" and "the science of economics" aren't science is because promotion is determined by what government wants and government wants results that support them rather than ones which are accurate. If promotion in astronomy were political it wouldn't be a science now either.

The manned space flights and lunar landings, were one of the first truly global events and created an entirely new perspective for humanity: that of us looking down on our planet as a single entity - The effect of the lunar flights and pictures of Earth were important but the effect of "environmental" scares such as DDT and the Linear No Threshold nuclear radiation one predate the Moon landings. LNT seems to have been faked in 1945. The growth rate in developed countries peaked in 1958/9 which I suggest can only be caused by government/eco parasitism at that point surpassing the increasing rate of technology growth.

Global communication networks meant that the peoples of earth were no longer isolated from each other.- Agreed. perhaps the most scary thing is how close we are to a de facto world government since such a thing would mean there is no outside competition to keep government efficient and non-parasitic.

The internet strengthened that sense of global “unity”, but also very importantly, it bypassed traditional communication networks through the press and TV. - The internet was minor in the 1980s when CAGW was made the official "Pravda". It has been irreplaceable un the rise of scepticism as a movement.

As a result of the global perspective and globalisation of industry, Global environmental groups grew up, particularly aimed at air pollution and nuclear fears. - As the Indians have demonstrated the importance of western "N"GOs and established wealthy individuals (eg the Club of Rome founders and promoters has been extensive worldwide.

But by the late 1990s, air pollution was already being effectively tackled, and the end of the Berlin wall brought an end to the immediate fear of nuclear disaster. As such environmental groups were bereft of any serious threat on which to focus. - Not just "environmental" groups. Here I would like to direct anybody who hasn't read it to Michael Crichton's State of Fear, which, while masquerading as a thriller is a surgical dissection of not just the "environmental" movement but the carious government promoted campaigns designed to keep us scared and obedient. In particular the chapter Oct 13 9.33AM page 536 in the UK edition is simply a lecture on the history of the media promotion of scares - including how it was provably ramped up several fold within days of the fall of the Berlin Wall when a (possibly) real scare was no longer available. It was not just, or even primarily, "environmental" groups who were bereft of a useful scare, it was all the apparatus of state bureaucracy. It is also likely that the fall of the USSR ("the end of history") removed the competition on government keeping it a bit honest and not wholly parasitic.

In the 1990s the internet (largely developed for academia by academia) was developing, and increasingly it allowed international communication between academics. As such subject specific inter-university “communities” of academics developed to replace the older intra-university communication which predominated before easy national and international communications. - Crichton's book, same chapter, develops the theory that, under the state pressure mentioned above, academia gave up its traditional role as a manufacturer of knowledge and became a manufacturer of scare stories. As can be seen our press, almost daily, report some silly new "report" by a "researcher" at some uni on how, having asked 20 students they have found that there is a 10% above average statistical correlation between smoking/getting laid/eating salt/owning a hat and feeling ill/having politically incorrect ideas/expecting to die before 100.

These new international academic communities, being very focussed on their own area of interest, became very insular and inward looking. They found new freedom from the constraints of their old colleagues from other subjects (who hampered them with “traditional” standards) and started defining their own internal community methodologies, working standards, ethical standards with little reference to other subjects. So, those areas without a long history and so without an established culture or established standards of work, were quick to adopt new ideas and those included ideas such as “post normal science” – which rejects many of the traditional foundations of science such as the requirement for the scientific method as the standard for the validity of scientific theories. - Also if you want to be a scientist you can be one in a government approved "new" discipline, and better paid than those stuffy old disciplines - see Mike Hulme's article on how wonderful the Post Normal Science he does is, where all you have to do is say whatever politicians want and how it is able to prove things that, like CAGW could "self evidently" never have been discovered by traditional science.

As environmentalists looked for new issues, some moved into campaigns for anti-globalisation, anti-industrial, and anti-oil (largely from the increase in oil use and the growing number of oil spills). The common thread here was that they were against an industrial economy powered by fossil fuel. - Even more against one powered by nuclear fuel. Essentially simply against anything that would allow human beings to control more energy because, as Mike and others have demonstrated, human progress marches in lockstep with increases (or reductions) in energy use. Inherently those at the top of society are conservative since any change in society can only take them off their perch.

From the 1970s-2000 there was a period when recorded temperature appeared to rise sharply. This coincided with the fall of the Berlin wall, the need for environmental groups to find new issues to campaign on, the rise of the internet. - I would say from 1979 - prior to that we had a decade of what appeared to be decline - which was used as a campaign scare story too.

When it was recognised global temperatures were rising, the scene was set. The environmentalists rushed into this new issue, encouraged by the academics (with no culture of holding back). - True.

The issue of global warming, quickly picked up momentum and unified the academics, environmentalists, and anti-fossil fuelers into one mass global campaign using the new power of the internet. Free from the old gatekeepers of the press, global warming was able to very quickly dominate public discussion.- I maintain that the unifying power was the state. The internet was not a major factor, except perhaps in academia, until well into the 1990s - for example NATO's Yugolsav wars were possible only because there was no internet competition to the state approved media, but this changed for both Iraq and Syria.

This created a new culture in which environmentalist felt free to use their access to the establishment press and their new freedom on the internet to engage repression and “witch hunts” of any who questioned the idea of CO2 induced warming. - Again I think state power was far more important.

However, something else had changed. In the past, whilst the press often created such “bandwagon” scares, it was ironically often the huge investigative resources of the wealthy press that finally uncovered the truth and brought the scare to a shuddering end. But this time the scare originated from outside the press and after 2000, the internet began seriously eating into the advertising revenue of newspapers as online advertising began to take over. In the past, if one wanted to sell a house, a car, find out what was on – then there was no choice but to buy a newspaper. Newspapers therefore had huge revenues and could afford to employ many journalists to investigate stories to fill the news sections. After 2000, as the internet took over the newspaper revenues crashed. Serious investigative journalism was now a luxury that could only be afforded on major scandals. As the internet took over, newspapers found themselves unable to do much more than copy and paste press releases without checking.- I'm not sure the press was ever that good but you make a good point that now they cannot afford to even try journalism, rather than just rewriting press releases.

Not only did this stop newspapers investigating, it also meant that papers could only afford to print “copy and paste” news. This meant that they focussed on the large institutions whose size guaranteed credibility. This was important as the journalists did not have to waste their limited resources checking up on the source of these stories. Also these institutions were large enough to afford to employ the staff who began doing the journalists job and writing the stories in a ready-to-print format.- Ok so they don't always much rewrite the press releases. The concentration on large institutuions, almost always officially part of the state or state funded sockpuppets. There are not likely to be more truthful but, because od state power they may be more "credible" - a self reinforcing process. In fact I would say most serious online sources are more reliable than most approved ones, if only because online you can check primary sources. Today even in matters of military intelligence online private sources have a better record of knowing what is going on than the CIA.

Smaller, less credible groups, without the resources of PR staff, failed to get press coverage. This further exacerbated the divide because only the big established organisations could afford to get the press coverage that got establishment funding. This has always been the case.

As a result, these new campaign groups had no real alternative. They could not get heard in the traditional print media, and so went online. This established a very sharp division in social communication: On the one side the old press, now reduced to “copy-and-pasting” establishment press releases and stories fed to them. On the other the new “peer-to-peer” internet completely bypassing all the establishment and talking to the public directly. This new internet was a “wild-west” atmosphere where anything went and there was no controls over what was said and whilst a lot was said, much of it lacked authority and credibility. The great thing is that we now do have an online alternative.

This is where those opposed to the now establishment orthodoxy of climate now got their message across.

UPDATE - Mike's reply

Neil, a great contribution. I kind of threw that together in a hurry. Yes, the time the internet started to come into play was 1990. Early on it was entirely academic (and military – but we don’t hear about that). What I assume is that environmentalists either through universities or because so many academics are environmentalists, was a very early adopter of the internet. In effect, they saw the internet as a way of bypassing the “oversight” of the press and that is how they campaigned. So, e.g. by the time wikipedia came along the environmentalists were so good at using the internet, that they just took over these websites. Finally, we saw the “old fogeys” like us skeptics starting to use the internet. Now, the internet is possibly dominated by skeptics.

It would be interesting to compare the behaviour of “new” climate departments and old “climatology” type departments. If I’m right, then most of the worst “hot-heads” should be from universities that started up climate departments.

Your point on nuclear power is correct. What I was trying to show is how “CO2″/fossil fuel, became a beacon around which a whole lot of disparate groups could unite. I suppose I should also have added “wind developers” and “oil companies – seeking to look green”.

In terms of government, I tend to view what government & politicians do as a cock-up. I do think many politicians were extremely gullible and thought “being green” was a very cheap way to get votes. There was a time every government minister wanted to be photoed in front of a windmill – because they were falsely led to believe by the wind lobbyists that it was a no-lose way to be portrayed as “caring” and being “with it”.

All politicians were told that wind was: a) free b) clean c) “wanted”d) attractive e) would create jobs f) They were left thinking it was just a few small windmills that no one would notice. g) had no drawbacks.

Politicians and civil servants ALMOST ABSOLUTELY NONE OF WHOM ARE ENGINEERS. Were left believing it was total madness not to go all out for wind. And they left themselves be poisoned by the evil wind developers (whose biggest contributors were oil companies) and gullible “greens” into actively excluding anyone who questioned their policy as they were told we were “EVIL OIL-PAID/mad/deniers/witches/bogey men”

No, the press were never that good. But as the lady from “No Fracking consensus” said to me – these days each journalist needs to get 10 stories out each and every day. They simply do not have the time even to rewrite a badly worded press release. Unless it’s word perfect — in the bin!!

In the past, a journalist would expect to meet local campaign groups (and local campaign groups would be really keen to talk to journalists – as there was almost no other way to get their message to the public). What is more the people in the campaign – would buy the paper to hear the latest news.

These days, if you need to organise a campaign – you go online. The press are an after thought, and less and less people buy newspapers to get updates from these types of campaigns.

For a journalist, these local campaigners are a real nightmare – they really expect the journalist to write the story for them, that takes up a huge chunk of time (From what I saw, about a full man-day, when journalist and photographer are added together). That compares to perhaps 30mins for a professional press release.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

This is the government's recent new "Longitude Prize" of £10 million to solve the world's greatest problems. Clearly it is neither a Longitude Prize nor an X-Prize, nor a serious attempt to solve real problems, but a bit of PR spinning by people who know nothing about any of them except that focus groups have said they are popular.

A real X-Prize, of which the real Longitude prize was an example, is given for a very specific objective technical achievement. Anything else is just government patrimony.

Still - that focus groups have said that X-Prizes are popular and that is an important and welcome development.

I have added my solutions in italics:

"The vote takes place between 22 May and 25 June, and will be held by the BBC on its Horizon website and by text. You can also sign up to a newsletter to keep up to date on the latest news. The winner will be announced on 25 June and will become the focus of the £10 million prize fund.
The challenges are as follows:

flight: how can we fly without damaging the environment? By airplane - they release CO2 which is beneficial to crop growth without having any downside like the "contributes to catastrophic global warming" totalitarian lie

food: how can we ensure everyone has nutritious, sustainable food? Market freedom, Britain quitting the EU and letting us trade with 3rd world food producers; and building the OTEC powered floating islands whose by product is seafood in vast quantities.

antibiotics: how can we prevent the rise of resistance to antibiotics? Keep some sorts off the agricultural market and held in reserve.

paralysis: how can we restore movement to those with paralysis? Powered exo-skeltons like those used for the ceremonial first kick in the Brazilian World Cup.

water: how can we ensure everyone can have access to safe and clean water? Life straws and free markets. Lomberg has repeatedly pointed out that we could supply clean water to the world for a small fraction of the cost of fighting the "catastrophic warming" fraud, so I suppose getting rid of our corrupt, totalitarian Fascist political class pushing the fraud would be a major step.

dementia: how can we help people with dementia to live independently for longer? A better question - probably safer housing and interactive computer systems would work. I may come back to this.

This prize will challenge scientists to tackle one of today’s greatest scientific problems. What makes this prize so innovative however, is that the public will be given the power to decide which area of science and society will benefit from this funding.

This is everyone’s opportunity to play a part in what could be the next scientific milestone.

Well I guess I have pretty much solved the "world's greatest problems" - is that worth £10 million or will it go to someone more respectful of the partasitic scum in power?

The evidence of their tinkering can clearly be seen at Real Science, where blogger Steven Goddard has posted a series of graphs which show "climate change" before and after the adjustments.When the raw data is used, there is little if any evidence of global warming and some evidence of global cooling. However, once the data has been adjusted - ie fabricated by computer models - 20th century 'global warming' suddenly looks much more dramatic.This is especially noticeable on the US temperature records. Before 2000, it was generally accepted - even by climate activists like NASA's James Hansen - that the hottest decade in the US was the 1930s.As Hansen himself said in a 1989 report:

In the U.S. there has been little temperature change in the past 50 years, the time of rapidly increasing greenhouse gases — in fact, there was a slight cooling throughout much of the country.

However, Hansen subsequently changed his tune when, sometime after 2000, the temperatures were adjusted to accord with the climate alarmists' fashionable "global warming" narrative. By cooling the record-breaking year of 1934, and promoting 1998 as the hottest year in US history, the scientists who made the adjustments were able suddenly to show 20th century temperatures shooting up - where before they looked either flat or declining.

But as Goddard notes, the Environmental Protection Agency's heatwave record makes a mockery of these adjustments. It quite clearly shows that the US heat waves of the 1930s were of an order of magnitude greater than anything experienced at any other time during the century - far more severe than those in the 1980s or 1990s which were no worse than those in the 1950s."

"Your money is safe but its a good idea. With hundreds of billions spent (much more if we count foregone growth) there should be volumes of proof of it happening by now if it were not a fraud."

At the very least, every politician, churnalist, broadcaster and pseudo-scientist who promoted this fraud owes us an unstinted public apology. By definition, every one who doesn't is a wholly corrupt thieving totalitarian Fascist parasite who can NEVER, under any circumstances, be trusted, without overwhelming supporting evidence, to be telling the truth on any other subject either.

Greenpeace and Other Ecofascist Organisations Destroying 2-3% of India's gdp, Far More Here

The Indian government last week banned direct foreign funding of local campaign groups, after a report by its Intelligence Bureau warned that organisations funded by Greenpeace and other international institutions were growing throughout the country and "spawning" mass movements which now pose a "significant threat to national economic security."

The decision was revealed after the Indian government indicated it was ready to further exploit its large coal reserves and asserted its right to increase carbon emissions for economic development. Prakash Javadekar, the environment minister, said India had a "right to grow" and that it could not address climate change until it had eradicated poverty.

According to the Intelligence Bureau report, Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups had stalled the development of new coal mines, challenged its plans for more coal-fired power stations, and delayed other vital infrastructure projects in campaigns which had reduced India's GDP growth by two to three per cent. Much of their work, it said, is funded by the US-based Centre for Media and Democracy, which the report described as a Democratic Party-oriented group supported by liberals like George Soros and "multiple far-left foundations".

2 or 3 per cent a tear is a lot. A country's gdp would be half its potential after 28 years. Maybe, since India HAS been growing at near to China's 10%, they are exaggerating a bit.

But the influence of "environmental" groups here is far greater. Several times greater. Which suggests we are losing at least 4-6% annual growth.

What does not get media coverage is the extent to which western governments are funding alarmism. ( of the top 10 "environmental charities" (Greenpeace being, allegedly, the exception) get 70% of their dosh from the EU (the EU originally suggested 50% but they said they could not work with such stingy funding). There are also grants from UK government, councils quangos and "N"GOs. All in all it looks like the eco "charitable" movement is almost entirely funded by western governments to promote scares. Of the dozens of world destroying eco-scares, obviously, not 1 has proven truthful. On the other hand every one has allowed government to enhance its power.
There may, or may not, be some truth to the attack on Putin (the lack of any actual evidence being produced suggests not) but the unreported but undisputed facts about our own government's totalitarian scaremongering is clearly far more important. The fact that it is being censored simply proves its importance

gscales631 No one bats an eyelid when renewables companies invest in these protest groups. We almost seem to think that it is expected. They stand to make millions upon millions if fracking goes ahead though so there is still a clear conflict of interest. Now imagine if energy companies invested in protest groups outside wind farms, or Greenpeace HQ.

I am a geologist. I have drilled about 115 wells including many in the UK. I know for a fact that the protesters mostly know nothing about drilling. It is easy to tell by what they say.

What bugs me most though is that if an energy company makes a leaflet about fracking it is pretty much guaranteed to be sent to the ASA with a list of things they disagree with. Yet somehow they can stand in the middle of the street with posters and banners or in the middle of town centres with giant canvases saying things to scare people which are not accepted by the majority of scientists and they get away with it time and again.

in this conversation

Indeed. Those in power are always conservative in the small c sense since who wants change when you are at the top.
Without massive government funding, massive support from the state owned BBC and the rest of the government influenced media and perhaps a certain amount from dead billionaires, there would be no Luddite movement. I don't say no environmental movement because it was there, passing Clean Air Acts and the like, long before the ecofascists came along and grabbed their flag. One way to tell real environmentalists is whether they would rather have clean nuclear or polluting coal and landscape destroying windmills.
Government should be absolutely forbidden to fund scare stories that enhance their power. This is positive feedback and is virtually always destructive.

I have previously called for that legal ban on state funding of ecofascist (or other) organisations being funded to raise scares which lead to the increase in government power. It is inherently totalitarian as well as being economically destructive.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Why Dowsing Works

Dowsing works. It has been practiced since the 15th C, with what clients say is success. There are thousands of reputable people who have no doubt it works. After WW2 the officer in charge of a British army base in Germany tried it when he couldn't get mains supply. The base is still using the well he found.
Dowsing doesn't work. When tested dowsers have repeatedly done little better than average. That little is seen in a lot of ESP phenomena and is well worth attention but it is irrelevant to the level of success claimed. When the Amazing Randi, debunker of a range of ESP phenomena turned up with his $10,000 prize for successful dowser he was inundated with people who clearly genuinely wanted to be tested because they thought it would be easy (rather different from séance runners who don't want his attention) - they failed.

So what is going on. This is my guess:

There is water down there almost everywhere. Dig deep enough even in the Sahara and you will find aquifers. What is needed is the confidence to keep digging. If a successful dowser says there is definitely water people will dig till they find it, where otherwise they would do a few feet and give up.

So it works in similar psychological way to the placebo effect. That is a very real effect.
=======================================
So what lessons does this have for the rest of reality.

That when people believe it can be done it can be (usually).

And on the other hand "When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found". - Prof John McCarthy

If Columbus hadn't believed he could sail across the Atlantic (because he though he thought the Earth was about 1/5th the size it is) he wouldn't have tried, or given up after a couple of weeks.

If Kennedy hadn't nailed his credibility to getting to the Moon by 1970 they wouldn't have (his scientific advisors thought the timetable loony).

In Heinlein's book Methuselah's Children humanity develops a way of ending aging because they know a group of conspirators have found out how and they only have to replicate the research. It works even though what they know is wrong.

If we believe the ecofascists that nothing can ever be done until it has been done successfully, for decades, it won't be.

If the political class say loudly enough that we need a tram system and are sufficiently committed to spend £1 billion on it we will get one (well half of one).

If the political class say finding life on Mars for £2 million; cutting tunnels at the same cost as Norwegian ones; automated trains sooner than automated cars, can't be done then it can't even though they all easily and cheaply could if there was a will to succeed.

If we say we can get rid of the parasite political class we can. But not if we say we can't.

And lets have major X-Prizes for things we don't currently even have an idea how to do - FTL drive; anti-gravity; age reversal; teleportation (at above the level of atoms); life after death; a Scottish government willing to allow us cheap housing; telepathy; time travel; dowsing. What's the downside to encouragement?

Saturday, June 21, 2014

More On Modular Housing

I have, on a number of occasions, written about how we could have inexpensive, comfortable, high tech housing any time, and anywhere if we were allowed.

In particular I have written of container homes, built out of shipping containers (10' X 10' X 40') which are widely in use already. Here are some more pictures.

These have the great advantage that they can be converted easily and thus cheaply and are already available.

However the real necessity for off site modular housing is simply that it be road transportable to the site.

So what can legally be road transported - a width of 10' (3m) of 60' (18m) and about 20' (6m) in height (though bridges limit the last). The book Why Construction Is So Backward by Woodhuysen et al contains a drawing of such a home. Being 20" tall means 2 floors. In fact I am sure it would be easy to do a fold up 3rd floor on top because it wouldn't be load bearing.

18m X 3m by just 2 floors is a home of 108 m.

British families are living in some of the most cramped conditions in Europe with more than half of homes falling short of minimum modern space standards, new research has found.

3 floors would be 162 m or "module" means you can have 2 together, or as many more as you want.

Incidentally with that much space, doubled to allow infrastructure and small gardens you get 9,260 per km, with 3 per family that is 28,000 per km. London is 8,382 km which would mean a population of 230 million. That is without multi-storey living like Keetwonen. That is not a population level I would ever aspire to but it does show that there is no sort of space limitation on this.
One libertarian option is just to classify these as temporary structures, which they obviously are, and get all building regulators off them.

Friday, June 20, 2014

JK Rowling - Independence Is Not Just For Christmas

This is JK Rowling's comments on independence. As Mike Haseler pointed out the original was formatted to make it difficult to read, which is a shame because it is about as serious and sensible as anything anybody has said on the subject:

Before you read the following, please be warned that it’s probably of interest only to people who live in Scotland or the UK (and not all of them!) If you read on regardless, you need to know that there is going to be a referendum on 18th September on whether or not Scotland should leave the United Kingdom. If you’re only vaguely interested, or pressed for time, there’s a mention of Death Eaters in paragraph 5.
I came to the question of independence with an open mind and an awareness of the seriousness of what we are being asked to decide. This is not a general election, after which we can curse the result, bide our time and hope to get a better result in four years. Whatever Scotland decides, we will probably find ourselves justifying our choice to our grandchildren. I wanted to write this because I always prefer to explain in my own words why I am supporting a cause and it will be made public shortly that I’ve made a substantial donation to the Better Together Campaign, which advocates keeping Scotland part of the United Kingdom.

As everyone living in Scotland will know, we are currently being bombarded with contradictory figures and forecasts/warnings of catastrophe/promises of Utopia as the referendum approaches and I expect we will shortly be enjoying (for want of a better word) wall-to-wall coverage.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I am friendly with individuals involved with both the Better Together Campaign and the Yes Campaign, so I know that there are intelligent, thoughtful people on both sides of this question. Indeed, I believe that intelligent, thoughtful people predominate.

However, I also know that there is a fringe of nationalists who like to demonise anyone who is not blindly and unquestionably pro-independence and I suspect, notwithstanding the fact that I’ve lived in Scotland for twenty-one years and plan to remain here for the rest of my life, that they might judge me ‘insufficiently Scottish’ to have a valid view. It is true that I was born in the West Country and grew up on the Welsh border and while I have Scottish blood on my mother’s side, I also have English, French and Flemish ancestry. However, when people try to make this debate about the purity of your lineage, things start getting a little Death Eaterish for my taste. By residence, marriage, and out of gratitude for what this country has given me, my allegiance is wholly to Scotland and it is in that spirit that I have been listening to the months of arguments and counter-arguments.

On the one hand, the Yes campaign promises a fairer, greener, richer and more equal society if Scotland leaves the UK, and that sounds highly appealing. I’m no fan of the current Westminster government and I couldn’t be happier that devolution has protected us from what is being done to health and education south of the border. I’m also frequently irritated by a London-centric media that can be careless and dismissive in its treatment of Scotland. On the other hand, I’m mindful of the fact that when RBS needed to be bailed out, membership of the union saved us from economic catastrophe and I worry about whether North Sea oil can, as we are told by the ‘Yes’ campaign, sustain and even improve Scotland’s standard of living.

Some of the most pro-independence people I know think that Scotland need not be afraid of going it alone, because it will excel no matter what. This romantic outlook strikes a chord with me, because I happen to think that this country is exceptional, too. Scotland has punched above its weight in just about every field of endeavour you care to mention, pouring out world-class scientists, statesmen, economists, philanthropists, sportsmen, writers, musicians and indeed Westminster Prime Ministers in quantities you would expect from a far larger country.

My hesitance at embracing independence has nothing to do with lack of belief in Scotland’s remarkable people or its achievements. The simple truth is that Scotland is subject to the same twenty-first century pressures as the rest of the world. It must compete in the same global markets, defend itself from the same threats and navigate what still feels like a fragile economic recovery.

The more I listen to the Yes campaign, the more I worry about its minimisation and even denial of risks. Whenever the big issues are raised – our heavy reliance on oil revenue if we become independent, what currency we’ll use, whether we’ll get back into the EU – reasonable questions are drowned out by accusations of ‘scaremongering.’ Meanwhile, dramatically differing figures and predictions are being slapped in front of us by both campaigns, so that it becomes difficult to know what to believe.

I doubt I’m alone in trying to find as much impartial and non-partisan information as I can, especially regarding the economy. Of course, some will say that worrying about our economic prospects is poor-spirited, because those people take the view ‘I’ll be skint if I want to and Westminster can’t tell me otherwise’. I’m afraid that’s a form of ‘patriotism’ that I will never understand. It places higher importance on ‘sticking it’ to David Cameron, who will be long gone before the full consequences of independence are felt, than to looking after your own. It prefers the grand ‘up yours’ gesture to considering what you might be doing to the prospects of future generations.

The more I have read from a variety of independent and unbiased sources, the more I have come to the conclusion that while independence might give us opportunities – any change brings opportunities – it also carries serious risks. The Institute for Fiscal Studies concludes that Alex Salmond has underestimated the long-term impact of our ageing population and the fact that oil and gas reserves are being depleted. This view is also taken by the independent study ‘Scotland’s Choices: The Referendum and What Happens Afterwards’ by Iain McLean, Jim Gallagher and Guy Lodge, which says that ‘it would be a foolish Scottish government that planned future public expenditure on the basis of current tax receipts from North Sea oil and gas’.

My fears about the economy extend into an area in which I have a very personal interest: Scottish medical research. Having put a large amount of money into Multiple Sclerosis research here, I was worried to see an open letter from all five of Scotland’s medical schools expressing ‘grave concerns’ that independence could jeopardise what is currently Scotland’s world-class performance in this area. Fourteen professors put their names to this letter, which says that Alex Salmond’s plans for a common research funding area are ‘fraught with difficulty’ and ‘unlikely to come to fruition’.

According to the professors who signed the letter, ‘it is highly unlikely that the remaining UK would tolerate a situation in which an independent “competitor” country won more money than it contributed.’ In this area, as in many others, I worry that Alex Salmond’s ambition is outstripping his reach.

I’ve heard it said that ‘we’ve got to leave, because they’ll punish us if we don’t’, but my guess is that if we vote to stay, we will be in the heady position of the spouse who looked like walking out, but decided to give things one last go. All the major political parties are currently wooing us with offers of extra powers, keen to keep Scotland happy so that it does not hold an independence referendum every ten years and cause uncertainty and turmoil all over again. I doubt whether we will ever have been more popular, or in a better position to dictate terms, than if we vote to stay.

If we leave, though, there will be no going back. This separation will not be quick and clean: it will take microsurgery to disentangle three centuries of close interdependence, after which we will have to deal with three bitter neighbours. I doubt that an independent Scotland will be able to bank on its ex-partners’ fond memories of the old relationship once we’ve left. The rest of the UK will have had no say in the biggest change to the Union in centuries, but will suffer the economic consequences.

When Alex Salmond tells us that we can keep whatever we’re particularly attached to – be it EU membership, the pound or the Queen, or insists that his preferred arrangements for monetary union or defence will be rubber-stamped by our ex-partners – he is talking about issues that Scotland will need, in every case, to negotiate. In the words of ‘Scotland’s Choices’ ‘Scotland will be very much the smaller partner seeking arrangements from the UK to meet its own needs, and may not be in a very powerful negotiating position.’

If the majority of people in Scotland want independence I truly hope that it is a resounding success. While a few of our fiercer nationalists might like to drive me forcibly over the border after reading this, I’d prefer to stay and contribute to a country that has given me more than I can easily express. It is because I love this country that I want it to thrive. Whatever the outcome of the referendum on 18th September, it will be a historic moment for Scotland. I just hope with all my heart that we never have cause to look back and feel that we made a historically bad mistake.

"The Policy outlined in this document will:
 abolish Corporation Tax for 90% of UK companies
 reduce the deficit faster than predicted by the OBR
 expand employment faster than predicted by the OBR
 increase competition and challenge Cartel Capitalism
 let millions of people grow tall.
These millions of individuals will enjoy:
 the opportunity to say “I am the captain of my ship”
 more money
 more freedom
 the first step on The Road from Serfdom.
The nation as a whole will benefit from:
 a change in culture as big as “Own your own Home” in the 1980s
 greater economic growth and lower unemployment than forecast by the OBR
 more competitive market places
 more freedom and independence from Big Government and Big Companies."

I have been pushing for CT cuts since before I started this blog in 2004. Basically following the example of Ireland where they cut CT, in a series of steps to 12.5%, and reduced regulation, particularly on housebuilding and achieved a 7% average growth rate.

So what do I think of Saatchi's slightly different proposal? It is an improvement. His is costed at £10.5 bn. Mine of cutting all CT by slightly more than half would cost just over a billion more. Not much difference. However by concentrating it all on smaller companies he gets some advantages - smaller companies provide more employment growth; smaller companies tend to be more innovative, until they grow into bigger companies; smaller companies have more difficulty borrowing so profits are more important for expansion.

He also has the advantage of being able to run it through an economic model. Lets take advantage of that.

The conclusion is that this £10.5 bn cut would increase growth by about 0.8%, though not in the first year because the investment has to work through. That means that by the end of a 5 year Parliament that growth would have replaced all that tax cut. Saatchi says that this 0.8% estimate is "conservative" and I agree. Indeed that is 1 of 3 reasons I believe the position is much better than he offers:

1 - Irish growth was 7% - 4.5% better than ours. Even if we assume more than half was due to the regulatory cuts (not the common feeling but probably true) and that, because Ireland is so much smaller than us, having lower taxes opened them up to proportionately more investment than us we still come out with the growth potential being around twice the 0.8% given. Also Irish growth did not take a year to take off and this is reasonable if investors see an improved investment opportunity - they will not wait, but start investing immediately, if they can.

2 - Increased national debt is only a problem in relation to the size of the economy. If we have growth of an extra 0.8% in the economy, debt can increase the same without making payment more difficult. Indeed if the size of government is unaltered there is actually proportionately more uncommitted money in the economy, though this is only a marginal effect.

Our current national debt is £1.4 trillion so 0.8% is £11.2 bn, just slightly above initial and maximum borrowing.

3 - If you have a growing economy you need to increase the money supply to keep prices stable. Money in UK circulation is rather larger than 1 year's gdp. In fact it was £2,200 bn in 2010 - presumably about £2,400 bn now. So an extra unexpected 0.8% growth means we can and should print £19 billion extra.
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This is not estimating conservatively but it is the realistic best estimate and if we don't do it there is no reason to believe reality will be conservative either.

So clearly we should go with this asap.

I would go further - promise that the take on CT and other business taxes will not be allowed to rise - if the economy grows, as it will, increasing the tax take, we will raise the level at which CT comes in (and when it is fully abolished, business rated and other such taxes). This means investors can look forward to a stable profitable investment, which is all they need.
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Low business tax is only part, the smaller part, of economic freedom. The greater part is not having parasitic state regulation. At least tax money goes back into the economy, albeit in less efficient ways and excluding the cost of government taxing and returning it. Wealth destroyed by regulation, for example 98% of the cost of electricity, is gone forever.

The EU regulations come to another 5%
(assuming the cost is equally borne by the people as by the government sector which is an optimistic assumption)

Remaining portion of income that goes to the value of what we actually choose

100% - 25.5% - 5% =69.5%

That 69.5% is, in turn reduced proportionately by all the other factors. Take off commercial building costs (est 2.5%), electricity charges through the rest of the economy (est 2%),accountancy (7.5%), child care (est 2.5%), assorted other (est 10%)

Total 24.5%

Therefore percentage of income we nominally get to spend which we actually get in our pockets & spent on the product not the surrounding regulation

69.5% X (100% - 24.5% = 52.5%

But if the regulatory part of economic freedom costs us more than the tax part the other side of the equation, cheap energy has even more potential. Roger Helmer has written of the advantages of letting decisions on electricity be made on economic not ideological grounds.

Nuclear is currently 40% of the average cost of our power basket.China is building at 0.27 our costs.Because China is building in three years and us in ten we have seven years foregone income while paying interest – assuming the normal 10% return that is 1.10^7 = 1.95Assume China is not entirely without state parasitism – say 10% VAT and carbon levies 20%How much could cost be reduced if it was allowed to mass produce reactors - three fold seems a conservative estimate.60% X 0.27 X 1/1.95 X 90% X 1/1.20% X 1/3 = 0.0208 or 2.08% of current costs.97.92% parasitism.
Major reductions, not quite as major, could be done by allowing the market to produce shale gas. Any reduction on electricity costs, not just one as major as this, if the laws of supply and demand work, would produce a many fold increase in energy use and therefore a many fold increase in gdp.

Indeed I have previously proposed a 24 point programme to the world's fastest growth, which includes my original CT cutting proposal, and it would work. Theoretically we might expect most of the proposals to increase growth by about an average of 2% a year, Some more, some less.

In practice we might be limited to a bit above the 20% growth Guandong province in China managed for years. Certainly the theoretical maximum, if we make growth our "Number one priority" (Scottish labour leader Jack McConnell promising at 2 elections - he knew what people want even if he lied about giving it) cannot be lower than the actually achieved maximum.

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Saatchi's proposal is a very good one, well thought out and verified. It is a small fraction of our potential.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

LPP Fusion Crowdfunding at £73,500 of £117,600

I have lifted this bodily from Next Big Future. I achieving it - the possibility of getting a working fusion device - would be wonderful. Odds are it will take longer and cost more, as such things do but even if that were so any slight shortening of the period to till humanity has unlimited power is worthwhile. So I ask you to make a small investment as advised in the ######### section. I consider copying NBF as a better way to use my photons here than an original article I would write.

Crowdfunding looks like a way those of us committed to human progress can bypass the parasitism of political pressure. I will have to look into it further but trying to get policitcal organisations, even the most sensible of them, to put even a tiny fraction of the money they take "to fund things that can only be funded by government" has not, so far, been very successful.

Scientists at LPP Fusion, led by Chief Scientist Eric Lerner, are just one step away from technically proving out dense plasma focus fusion and you a few thousand other people can help for the final push. They are already 63% of the way to the $200,000 they needed for a few key experiments with 19 days to go in the crowdfunding effort.

Success would be better than doubling NASA's budget and 100,000 times cheaper than one year of double NASA budget

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics has thanked Nextbigfuture.com and the Nextbigfuture community.

If this project is successfully fully funded and then leads to a successful experiment, then Nextbigfuture and the Nextbigfuture community will have been a significant part of creating a better future for space technology and energy.

LPP needs about 4000 more people to donate on average about $25 each or fewer people with larger average donations.

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It changed the course of history. It is remembered for the 300 Spartans at the battle. However, it was a Greek force of 7000 men at the start. Later the bulk of the Greek army was dismissed and 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and perhaps a few hundred others, most of whom were killed fought to the end. They died making history but you can help make the future for a few dollars.

Relatively Painless Money Saving Ideas to free up money to possibly change the world

This is a nuclear fusion project where a bit of public funding will have a huge impact.
It is ten thousand times cheaper than the International Tokamak project. ITER costs billions and will still require decades and two more projects to possibly get to a commercial fusion reactor and those fusion reactors will be about fifteen story tall buildings the size of a football stadium.

This project could be proven for about $1-5 million with critical components and testing helped by another $127,000.

LPP needs to get their Tungsten electrode and then later switch to a berrylium electrode.
If successful with their research and then commercialization they will achieve commercial nuclear fusion at the cost of $400,000-1 million for a 5 megawatt generator that would produce power for about 0.3 cents per kwh instead of 6 cents per kwh for coal and natural gas. This can lead to commercial energy that is twenty times cheaper than natural gas or coal Last night coal mining killed another 238 274 people.

Energy that is twenty times cheaper will provide a massive pollution-free boost to the global economy. Instead of global 3% growth with not enough jobs it will mean 5+% growth for 60 years or more at least.

They have imaged the pinch which shows that much of the physics is as expected

Shot 9-09-10-02, 0.225 microsec before pinchRight - Shot 9-15-10-07, magnified plasmoid at the pinch. We see the plasmoid on axis, which is about 150 microns across. The small dots are individual pixels, and do not represent actual fluctuations in intensity.

LPP’s mission is the development of a new environmentally safe, clean, cheap and unlimited energy source based on hydrogen-boron fusion and the dense plasma focus device, a combination we call Focus Fusion.

This work was initially funded by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is now backed by over forty private investors including the Abell Foundation of Baltimore. LPP’s patented technology and peer-reviewed science are guiding the design of this technology for this virtually unlimited source of clean energy that can be significantly cheaper than any other energy sources currently in use. Non-exclusive licenses to government agencies and manufacturing partners will aim to ensure rapid adoption of Focus Fusion generators as the primary source of electrical power worldwide.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Reading

British spaceport in 5 years (coastal region possibly in Scotland) I privately understand Lossiemouth is the Scottish option. Campbelltown airport is actually pretty advanced but the flightpath from the US to Glasgow airports crosses it.
--------------------------------------------------------Scottish secession will result in between 20,000 and 40,000 jobs moving to England, providing "huge boost" to City of London, says Centre for Economics and Business Research
--------------------------------------------------------Balloon windmills - I'm not convinced but they have at least the possibility of working which is more than current windmills do.
--------------------------------------------------------Jerry Pournelle - As of course I always have. Interplanetary colonization is not easy. When NASA studied self-replicating systems in Space in 1980 it was concluded that technology was not up to closing the loop: we could not build real self-replicating systems with the current technology. When the report was presented to the Administrator, I pointed out that we did have the technology to build one kind of self-replicating system: a Moon Colony. It would have a replication time of about 18 years. The Administrator asked “Why would anyone want to live on the Moon”, which sparked the L-5 Society study on lunar colonists that demonstrated there was no shortage of well educated adventurous couples who would undertake to go live on the Moon. But that was back in the days of great space enthusiasm.

The good thing about the Moon as a place to study problems of space colonization is that is is only a few days away for physical transportation, and only a few seconds away for communications. We don’t need great theorists on the Moon: we need craftsmen. The best heart surgeon in the world is available by high definition television; a skillful surgeon can do her work under the direction of the best.

Before we start trying to build self replicating colonies elsewhere we should learn to build them on the Moon – and they might well be both physically and economically successful.
As to getting to Mars, it has been decades since I ran the Human Factors Lab at Boeing and did serious professional study of such matters, but I have kept in touch, and I don’t believe we know how to get humans to Mars alive, much less maintain them there. I do know that if we have a Lunar Colony first, we’ll have a lot more confidence in Mars operations.
--------------------------------------------From Steve Sailer, I've not seen it reported elsewhere - The Dutch leftist legal professional who murdered in cold blood Pym Fortuyn, the candidate for prime minister on an immigration restriction platform, is out of prison after only 12 years. The assassin is usually identified as an "animal rights activist" to imply he was some kind of fringe wacko, but his testimony at his trial put him squarely in the mainstream of elite opinion on immigration in seeing Fortuyn's desire to stop Muslim immigration as beyond the pale. Indeed, the initial response of European Establishment figures in May 2002 was largely that Fortuyn had it coming.
-------------------------------------------Typical - Despite clear evidence that the pro-Kiev radicals set Odessa’s House of Trade Unions ablaze on Friday killing dozens, the mainstream media is being ambiguous about the causes of the tragedy.
On Friday, Ukraine’s eastern town of Odessa saw brutal street battles between pro-autonomy activists and nationalist radicals which left 46 people dead. The majority of the victims died in the Trade Unions House that was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals.

Very carefully worded commentary on the tragedy in Odessa came from the mainstream Western media, as if they were trying to avoid assigning the blame to those who actually set the building on fire. Their coverage of the event was heavily reliant on statements from Kiev that blamed the violence on pro-autonomy activists, as well as witness accounts given by the nationalist Right Sector members.
-------------------------------------------Spiked on why the propaganda war on UKIP failed - basically because it was OTT and obviously lies (however I cannot say it entirely failed - there are some people who actually believe that if the entire state owned media, state regulated broadcasters and state funded by advertising newspapers make smoke they can't be entirely lying about a fire.)
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Mike Haseler's list of Scottish blogs
-------------------------------------------"Age Reversal is no longer science fiction" by blood replacement. Not sure they have the full answer but they do have something.
-------------------------------------------DIY cruise missile